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Puercas fire, August 2025 Riofrío de Aliste, Gallegos del Río, Ferreruela

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2025, 02:51 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2025 in Gallegos del Río, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 6,459 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 8 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Zamora since 2016 (of 45 with a page). Number 14 in Spain in 2025, of 158.

Burnt area
6,459ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
12 Aug 2025 – 14 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
8
municipalities
Started on
12 Aug
2025
Heat detections
124
in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Aug 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug14 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

121314

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
58km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 89 ha in 2018, 12 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2021, 1,498 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Riofrío de Aliste 589 inhabitants · 0.1 km from the town
    3,850 ha reached on 12 Aug
    35 %
  2. Gallegos del Río 455 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the town where it started
    1,303 ha reached on 12 Aug
    17 %
  3. Ferreruela 409 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the town
    789 ha reached on 12 Aug
    8.4 %
  4. Losacio 90 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the town
    303 ha reached on 12 Aug
    14 %
  5. Vegalatrave 79 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the town
    174 ha reached on 12 Aug
    9.3 %
  6. Tábara 743 inhabitants · 12.0 km from the town
    25 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.2 %
  7. San Vicente de la Cabeza 309 inhabitants · 4.4 km from the town
    15 ha
    0.3 %
  8. Ferreras de Arriba
    4 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Sclerophyllous scrub44 %
  • Agricultural areas33 %
  • Other natural land14 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland4.9 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.7 %
  • Coniferous forest1.5 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 40 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Aug 35.6 °C 15 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug 32.1 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.7 mm High 37
14 Aug 34.3 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Aug after 36.1 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Aug after 36.2 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Aug after 35.3 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Aug after 29.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Aug after 26.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Aug after 26.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Aug after 25.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Aug after 27.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Aug after 29.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Aug after 31.9 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 5 Aug 2025
After · 21 Aug 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 109 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak109 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10142 µg/m³
Optical depth0.95
1011121314151617
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 124Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Puercas fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 August 2025 and 14 August 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 6,459 hectares (64.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 8 municipalities: Riofrío de Aliste (3,850 ha, 35 %); Gallegos del Río (1,303 ha, 17 %); Ferreruela (789 ha, 8.4 %); Losacio (303 ha, 14 %); Vegalatrave (174 ha, 9.3 %); Tábara (25 ha, 0.2 %); San Vicente de la Cabeza (15 ha, 0.3 %); Ferreras de Arriba (4 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.1 km of Riofrío de Aliste. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 112

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.